


even in the dark

by PetrichorIllusions



Category: Midnight Radio (Podcast)
Genre: Character Study, Do your otp actually need to meet in your fic? No, F/F, Post-Canon, Pre-Relationship, ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-21
Updated: 2020-11-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:48:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27660916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PetrichorIllusions/pseuds/PetrichorIllusions
Summary: The road ahead is long, but Sybil is determined to make it back to Amelia.
Relationships: Sybil MacIntyre/Amelia Birnbaum
Comments: 4
Kudos: 4





	even in the dark

**Author's Note:**

> I cannot explain how much I adore this podcast. And the only solution to an open ending is clearly to write, so: this happened. I may have misremembered some details when writing this, but artistic differences, etc, etc.
> 
> Title from The Road, from the Starry soundtrack, which seemed fitting in multiple ways.

The road is all-encompassing. There is nothing else. Are the trees even still there? Maybe it’s just darkness. Sybil doesn’t know; she has eyes only for the road. She’s been walking for a while now, and it’s been changing as she goes. She couldn’t say when it had begun, but it’s beautiful, now, no longer just a road; a silver and shimmering path below her. An idle thought in the back of her mind wonders how she’ll describe it to her radio audience - but, oh, that’s right, she’s left the radio. 

For a second, the glow of the road seems to dim. 

She walks. 

But once she’s thought it once, the second thought comes a little easier. It’s a little like a star, perhaps, if one could walk across a pathway made of them. Oh, the stars. She would so like to see them, one last time. She looks up, hopeful, but the light from the road is too great, and the sky seems dark above her. 

Because she’s looking up, she doesn’t notice the edge of the road as it crumbles, just a little, doesn’t notice as it shimmers off, a thread leading into the dark. 

She takes another step, and the thread disappears. 

Yes, she would like to see the stars. Maybe this road will take her somewhere where they’re so bright, she won’t even need her brother’s telescope to see them all. She thinks of a night long ago, when she’d snuck out of the house hours before sunrise, walked down to the orchard, away from where the street lamps faded. She hadn’t realised, before that, how many more stars were out there than she knew. She’d seen the whole _galaxy,_ that night. She’d been so caught up in it that she’d barely remembered to go home, had almost been caught for the first time ever. She’d spent the next day yawning, rubbing at the crick in her neck from staring upwards for so long. 

Yes, she would very much like to see that again. 

She’s looking ahead, this time, so she notices the strand of road that separates, that disappears off into the black, turning a corner up ahead so she can’t see where it goes. It really is like stardust. She allows her longing to see the stars to fill her, and the strand gets wider. But the road ahead is wide, and this is barely enough to walk on. Surely she can’t—

But there are other things she wants to see, as well as the stars. She wants to see Dawn Arbour again, wants to see how it’s changed, how it’s stayed the same. She wants to see a museum, everything inside of it that she could possibly dream of. She wants to see—

_Amelia._

More so even than the stars, she wants to see Amelia. Amelia, who never stopped writing letters; Amelia, who reminded her of the truth; Amelia, who gave her the courage to even find this road. 

Amelia, who loves her. 

The new path solidifies, still narrow, but more than wide enough to walk on. 

Sybil isn’t unfamiliar with crossroads. After all, hadn't the radio station been just that? Perhaps she should have been on this road a long, long time ago. Perhaps she should finally follow where it goes. Perhaps that’s the right thing to do. 

Although… although, if she hadn’t, if she hadn’t stayed, she wouldn’t have been able to help Amelia through all this. She wouldn’t have been able to help those other listeners she’d received letters from - Peter, for those few years, before his letters had slowly become less and less frequent, before they’d stopped entirely. A few others, too, though none of them for quite so long. But even if not all of them wrote in, she’s sure she had more listeners than that. Call it a host’s intuition; call it egotistical, but people heard her voice, even if she has little proof of it. People heard her voice, and what’s more, they’d listened. It was a good thing, that she’d stayed. She’d helped, and she’d done all that for them. 

Maybe now, it’s time to choose something for herself. 

She closes her eyes before taking the first step onto the path; scared it’s not real, that her foot will fall through and she’ll be pulled into the blackness below, that she’ll be falling forever, never able to make it back to the road. 

Before her foot touches down, she lets her eyes drift open, and she pulls back just in time to stop herself. Silver swirls beneath her like ink in black water, insubstantial, almost mischievous. It hadn’t been like that, before she’d closed her eyes. 

_Amelia,_ she thinks, and the swirling slows. _Amelia is waiting for me._ It’s like frost coming over a lake, silver ice crystals forming and expanding until the path is solid once more. Sybil doesn’t close her eyes this time. She thinks of Amelia, and takes the first step. 

The path holds. 

The path is just as long as the road had been, but with no markers in the black depths around her, she might have been walking for hours, might have been walking for months. The changes, when they begin, are so gradual she doesn’t even notice it’s begun. It’s as if the colour is leaching out of everything, the silver of the road beginning to dull, as if it’s finally tired of shining. But the blackness around her seems just a little less absolute, as if the light is just spreading out, with nowhere specific to go.

For just a moment, she fears, and the edges of the path crumble into the grey. But she _won’t_ let it fall away now, not when she’s come this far. The crumbling stops, and she holds her head high, ignoring the blackness around her, even as it turns lighter still, even as it seems to open outwards. The glow of the path is fading too, towards a different grey. As if it’s - stone. She walks further, and suddenly there are marks in the path. It’s - paving stones. She’s walking on a pavement. 

And there’s a — light, a long way in the distance. Small, but warm, yellow. Perhaps it’s on a hill, the way it seems to be so far above her. She finds herself walking more slowly now, and the apprehension in her chest doesn’t seem to affect the stone beneath her now, so she lets herself feel it, even as she keeps moving, even as she heads towards the light. 

And when it’s close, she finally understands. It’s not on a hill, it's a street lamp. She’s on a street. On a pavement on a street. The light from the lamp pools in a circle, and it’s not far away at all now. She finds herself paused. The light seems like a precipice, though the road looks smooth ahead. Around the pool of light, the greyness persists. But she won’t look behind her. She thinks of Amelia, of the museums they will one day go to. She thinks of the orchard, of the apples that she’s waited so long so taste again. She thinks of the stars. 

She steps into the light. 

The greyness changes around her, filling in the details as she blinks. A bridge, the slow trickle of water a gentle murmur after the silence. Houses of brick and wood. And more street lamps, a long road of them. 

She knows where she is. 

Sybil walks down Oak Street, the street that all lovers in Dawn Arbor walk down, and in the distance she can see, after all these years: someone is finally walking up the road to meet her. 

**Author's Note:**

> If you want to talk more about Midnight Radio, you can find me at courfaeriedust on tumblr and Twitter. I hope you enjoyed this, and I hope to finish the other fic I’m working on in this fandom sometime soon too!


End file.
